Billy Collins is a former Poet Laureate of the U.S. and creator of Poetry 180. I heard an interview of him on some podcast, I think. Maybe this one. He read his poem, "The Lanyard." I think it's brilliant and wanted to share it here.

"The Lanyard" by Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowlyoff the blue walls of this room,moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,when I found myself in the L section of the dictionarywhere my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelistcould send one into the past more suddenly—a past where I sat at a workbench at a campby a deep Adirondack lakelearning how to braid long thin plastic stripsinto a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyardor wear one, if that’s what you did with them,but that did not keep me from crossingstrand over strand again and againuntil I had made a boxyred and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,and I gave her a lanyard.She nursed me in many a sick room,lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.Here are thousands of meals, she said,and here is clothing and a good education.And here is your lanyard, I replied,which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,strong legs, bones and teeth,and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.And here, I wish to say to her now,is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,but the rueful admission that when she tookthe two-tone lanyard from my hand,I was as sure as a boy could bethat this useless, worthless thing I woveout of boredom would be enough to make us even.